


Remember When It Rained

by SteveLovesBucky



Series: Time Heals All Wounds [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Big Damn Heroes, Bucky Barnes Feels, Crying Steve Rogers, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Men Crying, One True Pairing, Pining, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Songfic, Soulmates, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, Trauma, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:13:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteveLovesBucky/pseuds/SteveLovesBucky
Summary: After seeing Bucky reduced to ashes from The Snap, Steve is like everybody else who has been grieving for somebody culled by Thanos. Upon learning of the quantum realm from Scott Lang and the possibility of undoing The Snap and Thanos, a faint hope reawakens in Steve’s heart. Songfiction.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: Time Heals All Wounds [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761274
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Remember When It Rained

**Author's Note:**

> After seeing Steve's heartbroken expression at losing Bucky to The Snap, I just had to rectify the story. 
> 
> While many characters are referenced, Steve is the main focus.
> 
> Josh Groban’s song “Remember When It Rained” is a perfect fit.

Howls of anguish resounded across the world; half of all life had been turned to ash when Thanos snapped his fingers. 

Steve had been just meters from where Bucky last stood. Shock was all that he felt now. All that he could register in his mind for the moment was that Bucky was gone. The man he loved had been stolen from him again.

_Wash away the thoughts inside  
That keep my mind away from you.  
No more love and no more pride  
And thoughts are all I have to do._

People who had existed just moments before were now landing silently in the form of ashes on the ground. T’Challa, Sam, Wanda, too many people… and Bucky was one of them. Once again, Steve couldn’t reach him in time. Couldn’t save the man he loved more than his own skin.

Steve was numb as his hand closed around a fistful of ashes that had once been Bucky. He couldn’t register emotionally yet that Bucky had been stolen from him again.  
Too many people were grieving now, Steve knew that he had lost beloved friends… but for the moment only Bucky’s name was on his lips. In his heart. 

While he remembered the visceral scream that escaped his throat, that he had been screaming Bucky’s name, he could not remember hearing a thing in the middle of his anguish. He’d felt like he would faint from anguish, but new thoughts had taken their place. Thoughts that included massacring Thanos and using the Infinity Stones to undo the sudden cull.

_Ohhhhhh Remember when it rained.  
Felt the ground and looked up high  
And called your name.  
Ohhhhhh Remember when it rained.  
In the darkness I remain._

Months had passed and, like many, Steve had fallen into despair. 

The surviving Avengers and their surviving allies had found Thanos, hoping to use the Infinity Stones to undo the Snap. But Steve’s heart not only sank when he learned that Thanos had destroyed the Stones to prevent any more use; his heart fell out of his breast and shattered on the ground. 

Not even Thor’s enraged beheading of Thanos was any comfort to him. He knew that none of it would bring the annihilated back to them.

Now the survivors had little else to do aside from continue with life and grieve for their lost loved ones.

Grief and its emptiness had become the general mood of the world, and Steve was not an exception. Not even Thor’s Asgardian liquor helped him for long, as he still metabolized it too fast to feel any effect. Every day he awoke and went to sleep with watering eyes and a knot in his throat, complete with a void in the middle of the remains of his heart. A void that was the shape of everybody he loved who had been culled in The Snap.

But that did not mean that nothing remained of responsibilities as the Avengers. There remained some enemies who threatened the fragile peace that remained. Steve and his comrades had to respond accordingly, despite their own pain. And thus life continued. Steve was determined to continue acting the part of the perpetual hero, which he did despite that his main reason to live had been disintegrated with so many others.

_Tears of hope run down my skin.  
Tears for you that will not dry.  
They magnify the one within  
And let the outside slowly die._

Five years had passed since The Snap and everybody had been surprised when Scott Lang arrived at the Avengers compound, full of news.

Steve and Nat listened to Scott intently as he relayed every bit of information. The five years that Steve had been without Bucky had been only five hours for Scott. And that he implied that the quantum realm could allow time travel was a revalation; it was possible to retrieve the Stones, defeat Thanos, and undo all the damage that he had done.

Presenting the idea to Tony had not been an easy task, not least because relations between him and Steve remained tenuous, but because Tony had Pepper and Morgan to think about and he was afraid of what might happen to them if anything happened to him or, worse, if it failed.  
But Stark could still see Peter’s body disintegrating right in front of him. Could still hear his voice. With lingering reluctance, Tony eventually agreed. He had many misgivings, but by this point he desperately wanted to set things right. Peter was the son he’d never had.

Bruce also had misgivings about the idea, given the ethics of creating many alternate realities as a result of their desire to undo what Thanos had done. But he also wanted The Snap undone, especially after seeing Thor’s condition. The poor man had effectively given up, as had Clint; he remembered the hollow look in Clint’s eyes when Natasha retrieved him from Tokyo.

In the midst of all this, Steve felt a chill of hope. The agony of it as the moment of truth came closer and closer was becoming too much for his traumatized nerves.

It was the night before the big day and Steve was a bundle of nerves as it all inched closer, the chance of reversing The Snap, destroying Thanos… and regaining Bucky.

As tears burned his eyes before burning his cheeks. Already perpetually red-eyed and somber, he was becoming frantic as he felt hope sweep through him again and he soon found himself nearly hyperventilating as he fell apart, away from the eyes of the team. 

_“Bucky…!”_ he squeaked as he gasped the name,

_Ohhhhhh Remember when it rained.  
I felt the ground and looked up high  
And called your name.  
Ohhhhhh Remember when it rained.  
In the water I remain  
Running down_

Although his lower lip trembled, although Steve knew that there were not any guarantees, he was determined to proceed with the plan, even if it meant that he would only see Bucky for one last time. Even if it was the last thing that he ever did.

_Running down  
Running down  
Running down  
Running down  
Running down  
Running down _

Fin.


End file.
